The Security State: Is Al Qaeda Winning the War on Terror?

On this, the eleventh anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, there is a general consensus that “we” are winning the so-called war on terror. In Charlotte last week, President Obama declared, “A new tower rises above the New York skyline, Al Qaeda is on the path to defeat, and Osama bin Laden is dead.” That’s true, of course, and it’s right and fitting to remember the victims of 9/11, and pay tribute to the troops who’ve fought in places like Helmand Province.

But what sort of victory does it constitute? The primary aim of terrorists is to inspire terror. Bin Laden, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, and other Al Qaeda leaders aspired to force the U.S. military out of Saudi Arabia and other Arab lands, but they knew this was unlikely. Their immediate goal was to strike back at the Great Satan, creating lasting panic, trepidation, and dread inside the United States. They wanted to shock Americans into realizing that the actions their government took overseas would have consequences, potentially very bad consequences, at home. More than a decade on, can we say that the 9/11 terrorists haven’t achieved these things?

After fighting two unpopular wars in ten years, the United States is so cowed that it is slinking out of Afghanistan, the task it set itself patently unfinished, while it refuses even to consider intervening in Syria, where a military dictator is bombing his own people. About the only military intervention Washington will countenance these days is bombing suspected enemies, the occasional one an American citizen, with unmanned drones—an activity that largely takes place beyond the purview of Congress and the media.

In libertarian and interventionist circles, this state of affairs is widely discussed and lamented. But what of the situation here at home, where the actions of nineteen men armed only with box cutters has transformed the United States into a country consumed to the point of obsession with security? Air travellers have become compulsory participants in peep shows, with high-tech magnetometers and X-ray machines conducting virtual strip searches. Metropolitan police departments have been converted into paramilitary forces armed with assault rifles, armored personnel carriers, and even, in the case of New York, anti-aircraft guns. Peaceful protesting has turned into a potentially dangerous pursuit, given the aggressive policing that it attracts. And many major events now take place behind security cordons so elaborate they are almost laughable.

In Charlotte last week and in Tampa the week before, great swaths of downtown were transformed into virtual military encampments—and for what purpose? To protect the dignitaries and delegates from possible bomb attacks? A simple cordon drawn around the Tampa Bay Times Forum and the Time Warner Cable Center would have sufficed for that purpose. Rather than securing the convention sites, the authorities in Tampa and Charlotte fenced off and locked down block after block, deploying so many heavily armed cops, national guards, and Secret Service agents that it was impossible to count them all.

One of the charms of going to conventions used to be that everything took place within a small area, and you could wander around and bump into people: politicians, delegates, party activists, protesters. These days, it’s so much hassle getting from A to B that it’s hardly worth venturing outside your allotted seat—if you can get to it in the first place. Twice last week, I was locked out of the Time Warner Cable Arena after the Secret Service shut it down without an explanation. On the first occasion, it reopened after about an hour, and I managed to get in. The second time, the gates didn’t reopen at all, and I eventually gave up. It wasn’t just journalists who were complaining. At the G.O.P. convention, I hitched a ride back from an event in St. Petersburg with one of Mitt Romney’s big donors. He was bemoaning the fact that his hotel was inside the security zone, which meant that it was virtually impossible for him to see anybody. “It’s a nightmare,” he said.

Now, you may not give a fig for the concerns of cosseted journalists and multi-millionaires, and I can’t say I blame you. But what about ordinary Americans who want to get their views across in a peaceful demonstration? Increasingly, the only way to do this is inside a riot-police “kettle” at the time and place of the authorities’ choosing. We saw this across the country last year with the heavy-handed treatment of Occupy Wall Street. It happened again in Charlotte. Returning to the Westin Hotel one night, I came across a couple hundred protesters, tops, carrying signs and chanting anti-war and anti-corporate slogans. To be honest, it was a pretty piddling turnout, the sort of affair that twenty years ago would have been handled by a couple of dozen cops, with a few horses as backup.

Outside of the military, I have rarely seen such a display of firepower. Surrounding the protesters, there were at least as many cops in full riot gear. Along the sidewalks, there were cops on bikes, their batons interlinked, preventing any of the onlookers from joining the demonstrators. At every intersection, there were dozens and dozens of officers on motorbikes. Immediately in front of and behind the demonstration, there were big trucks—personnel carriers, really—packed with more cops ready to leap off if needed. And up various side streets, there were yet more helmeted cops providing backup. I hate to think how much it was costing to police a demonstration so small it hardly made the local papers.

Some of these security precautions were probably put in place last year, during the O.W.S. protests, when the authorities in Tampa and Charlotte feared thousands of demonstrators descending upon their cities. Ultimately, though, they were as much a product of 9/11 as the airport security lines and the drone missions were. With plentiful federal funds available to beef up “homeland security,” police departments all over the country have been stocking up on military-style hardware that, although originally intended to target foreign terrorists infiltrating the country, is now increasingly used for regular police work involving American citizens who pose no threat to national security.

Perhaps the most depressing thing about all of this is that virtually nobody in the two major parties challenges it. Republicans who cavil when Washington finances green-energy companies are perfectly happy to see countless billions of federal dollars being spent on X-ray machines, electronic eavesdropping, and riot gear. Democrats, understandably eager not to be criticized as soft on security issues, are just as ready to spend. In the past four years, the Obama Administration has expanded the budget of the Department of Homeland Security by almost a fifth. From both sides, there is nary a word about the cost-effectiveness of the spending, or how it is changing the relationship between citizens and government.

Whichever party wins in November, the security state will continue to expand—we can be sure of that. Come the twentieth anniversary of 9/11, it will probably still be growing. Fighting terror, like fighting Communism before it, has become a growth industry, the participants in which constitute an immensely powerful lobby. Barack Obama may be right when he says Al Qaeda is all but defeated. But its legacy is thriving.